What Lincoln is Thinkin' - Should VCU Stay or Go?

We may finally know whether VCU is going to stay in the CAA, or leave for the Atlantic-10 by the end of the week. The VCU Board of Visitors is set to meet on Friday, and that board has to vote on whether the school can leave a conference before anything can become official. If the board doesn't vote on it Friday, they may not be able to until their next meeting in August.

Right now it's not on the official agenda, but things can always change.

So should they stay or should they go? The CAA has been a great conference for them - the basketball tournament is right in their own city, their biggest rivals other than the Spiders are mostly very close, and the league at times has been a multi-bid league. With all those being indisputable facts, it's hard to say that it's worth leaving.

But what VCU has to worry about, is whether those will still be facts in the future. While the conference tournament will likely remain in Richmond, if teams continue to leave the CAA, how much longer will it be a two-bid league? And if ODU joins Conference-USA, George Mason joins the A-10, and James Madison joins the MAC, who is left to play VCU in the CAA?

It's time to be proactive. And it's time to leave.

Take it from a proud alumnus of Syracuse. I LOVED having my team play Big East basketball. The rivalries with Georgetown, Villanova, Notre Dame and Connecticut, plus the tournament at Madison Square Garden, is all very important to me. But football has turned into a joke, and now that the Big East has added lower tiered teams from all across the country, that conference has now become a joke. I would have loved for Syracuse to have remained in the Big East as it used to be, but now, I'm ecstatic that they're joining the ACC.

I have to believe that the CAA if facing the same future as the Big East. The CAA has been a great breeding ground for these schools, and that's why they're so attractive to other conferences. Because the CAA has been a damn good conference. But if VCU doesn't leave, what is this conference going to look like in three years?

Will I miss the VCU playing in the Coliseum for the postseason tournament? Hell yeah.

Will I miss important conference games against ODU, William & Mary and James Madison? Definitely.

But even if VCU stays in the CAA, those days may be over anyway.

Conference realignment has eaten up the Big East, and left teams like UConn and Rutgers out to dry. It may soon eat up the CAA. VCU doesn't not want to still be in it when it happens.

Shareka and Shameka McNeill are freshman on the Virginia Union women's basketball team. They've always been teammates, and have relied on each other during their adjustment to college, both on and off the court.

Shareka and Shameka McNeill are freshman on the Virginia Union women's basketball team. They've always been teammates, and have relied on each other during their adjustment to college, both on and off the court.